Sandro Tonali has not had the start to his Spurs career that he would've liked.
Any club-record signing arrives with sky-high expectations, let alone a player who breached the £100m threshold. The Tonali deal will only reach that figure if certain add-ons are met, but the Italian is never going to be regarded as a £92.5m man.
While plenty underrated Tonali's talent when it became clear that it was Spurs who'd win the race for his signature, it was accepted that Newcastle United had done superbly well to garner the fee they did for the midfielder.
And Spurs fans have undoubtedly pondered since seeing Tonali in Lilywhite whether this was it. Is this what we paid £100m for? I don't think Tonali's been particularly bad, but there's a sense that what he's currently offered in terms of blood and thunder and surges in possession is what we'll ever get. It's not what a £100m footballer looks like, that's for sure.
You see, Spurs' Premier League-exclusive policy (and mammoth outlay) created an expectation that everything would click right away. With players familiar with "our League", we'd escape a messy acclimatisation phase, right?
Not quite. We're still in the midst of a sticky gelling-in process, with our array of new signings yet to settle for one reason or another. As a result, we're bottom of the Premier League after five games and hope isn't exactly in abundance.
But we can be encouraged by what we've heard from our record-signing over the break.
Tonali says he's "100%" after Roberto De Zerbi's fitness concerns
The mentality shift Roberto De Zerbi facilitated after his appointment was crucial in Spurs staying up. He didn't allow negativity to foster, nor did he wallow in self-pity—not publicly anyway—having inherited a tough situation.
The manager may well feel as if he's in a similar boat just a few months on. Spurs were the butt of all jokes before Manchester City stole our beer, with resentment rife across the division regarding our summer spending. The overwhelming majority want us to crash and burn, and we've delivered so far.
De Zerbi has attributed misfortune to our sluggish start, and to an extent he's right. We're deserving of more than two Premier League points through five games. Despite this, the mood in the camp hasn't deteriorated, as Tonali outlined (via The Standard): "Football is very strange; in 10 days, everything can change from negative to positive.
"I would classify our current situation as a club as negative in terms of results but positive for football.
"We're having fun and creating chances. If you don't score in football, you lose. We're not in the doldrums; we're alive and well, and we're positive," he added.
Spurs have the chance to completely shift the narrative when they face Manchester United and Chelsea away from home after the break. As Tonali pointed out, it doesn't take much for public opinion to alter and for the mood in N17 to complete a 360. We're a fickle bunch.
And we're set to benefit from a fully-fit iteration of the Italian in short order, with Tonali confirming over the break that he's now "100%" physically. De Zerbi has tried to temper expectations at the start of the midfielder's Spurs career, suggesting Tonali wasn't in the perfect physical condition.
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